Page 44 of A Thousand Painted Hours

How well I understand the feeling of dullness you describe, that sense of lack—no salt, so sugar, no sun in the sky, not even the comfort of a peacock’s cry. Nothing but cold and wet, the skies endlessly weeping, not in the way of a monsoon, but just a constant, wearying rain.

There is not even the smell of spice from the kitchens, for we are now truly relegated to English meals. I’ve never seen my father so happy at the table, but Mother and I are not. I’ve promised to gather recipes to replicate the Anglo-Indian dishes we enjoyed, but for now I shall subsist on dull grains and colorless vegetables, boiled half to death.

Tanveer, truly—thank you for writing. Your letter gave me such a moment of joy, it was as if the sun itself had broken through the gray and poured gold into my heart. I have drawn the moment for you. It is only me, and my paints in the window of my room, looking east to India, hoping to smell its fragrance on the wind.

One small joy: Mother has consented to my enrolling in the Slade School of Fine Art when I am old enough, which allows women.

My father does not yet know, but I have decided that I shall not marry, and will put at the center of my life the only other love I can bear—this work, my painting. A husband will only take it from me.

Of course, my brother (never to be called Willie anymore, only Will, and he now prefers the full William) has been plotting a wedding for me for years, thinking to shore up with a brilliant marriage the rather thin fortunes that accompany my father’s title.

The boy who caught frogs and came home with muddy feet is long gone, buried beneath a proper British education, unlike his sister with her wretched accent, which I wickedly make worse for his benefit. Mother implores me not to tease, but I see her lips twitching. She loves him so and is wildly overjoyed to be back in his company. Because I loveher, I don’t begrudge her this small comfort.

Here is my drawing. Send me something that smells of sunlight.

Tell me more of your reading and your thoughts of Indian independence. Do you think it will happen in the next decade or two? A worthy subject of study. I remember my father bemoaning a strike on English goods at some point. Was that the division of Bengal? The details are lost to me—but I suppose children have no context for politics.

In honor of our truth, I will tell you that Ialsofear I will become some other person here, that somehow the weight of clouds and expectations and pressure will conspire to quench the fire that has fueled me to this point and I will become some limp imitation of myself. What if I am sugared down to a wife who only cares for parties? The lure of the ease in that life is tempting at times.

I hope you will help me hold fast to myself.

In hopes of sunlight and good friendship,

Elsie

PS I have attempted a translation, poor though it may be. I’ve included a sonnet from the bard himself to challenge you to capture the cadence in Urdu.

[Enclosed drawing of Elsie with her paints looking toward the horizon]

Sketches at Dawn

Autumn 1940

London

—25—

We enjoyed a few nights of quiet in October, all of us getting a solid night of sleep several days in a row. On this dark, rainy afternoon, I felt clearheaded and even mildly optimistic—maybe the Nazis would continue to be stymied by the dark, stormy nights—and Mother sat up in bed, her cheeks pink. I read to her most days. She’d asked me to find things set in India, and after discovering we could not tolerate the arrogance of Kipling, no matter how good his descriptions, I found a much-thumbed copy ofA Passage to Indiaat the lending library. Both of us were enjoying the trip down memory lane, and, although Nainital had not been much like Chandrapore, the writing was excellent and the divisions between British and locals were familiar.

The kittens frolicked over the bed, little balls of wild happiness, all still clumsy with too-long claws getting caught in the cloth of her blanket, shrieking their little hearts out when they were caught. Mother patiently freed one, then another, and they often curled up in various hollows of her body, for Bastet had firmly decided she was the finest human in the household and draped over her belly at every opportunity, purring.

“Never mind that I’m the one who feeds you, young traitor,” I said, stroking her multicolored back. She purred happily, but didn’t move. Tanveer had told me once that purring was a healing sound, like chanting or singing. If Bastet could pour healing into my mother’s failing system, I would help her purr all day.

I read for a little longer, then settled the book in my lap. “How did you and the maharani become friends, anyway? Wasn’t that social suicide?”

“Oh, Elsie, what did I care about the club and all the gossip? So many of those women were bored to tears, and I had things to do.”

“But wasn’t it odd from her side, too?”

Her long white hand slid down Bastet’s spine. “It might have been, but we found common ground in our interest in women’s health, and in truth, her husband had begun to court his third wife, so he found some peace in her taking up residence here.” She blinked. “I mean Nainital.” Her smile was thin. “I find it all blending together of late. The maharani and Nainital and Herewich, and Santa Fe and London.”

“So many adventures.”

“Not like yours. The Pyramids and the Buddhas of Bamiyan. India in the twenties, when everything was changing so quickly. It must have been so exciting.”

“I was far away from all that, really.” The piercing layers of the time I spent in India in the twenties were secret even from my mother. How desperately I had wished to stay there. It had been, in part, my mother’s need that drew me back to England, and Peter, and all that I had come to loathe.

“Channan was on bed rest,” I continued, “and I spent most of my time with her. And I painted a great deal.” I glanced up to one large canvas that had emerged from that period, both saturated and soft, a hazy painting of our old house in Nainital rendered with an almost abstract eye. Three children played on the steps while two women took tea in the shade. All of us.